Tantrums, Trampolines and Tortoises

The other day I was left in charge of two of my younger sisters (yes…i have four sisters in total, crazy right?!), one of whom is eleven (Clara) and pretty much just chills and looks after herself but the other is just a baby (Thalia), well almost two, so she requires a little more attention. And my god is she entering those ‘terrible twos’ with a bang.

First it was, ‘lets go outside and play with the chickens’. ‘okay…yes’, she says. So we go upstairs to get her dressed and all hell breaks loose when an attempt at changing her nappy (or ‘mappy’ as she calls it) is made. I mean she literally had an absolute screaming meltdown, the likes of which I’ve never seen. Eventually though, and with the use of many distraction tactics, I managed to wrestle her into some clothes, after which she was a very happy bunny and toddled off to play with her dolls, the chickens completely forgotten about.

Shortly afterwards we had a game of hunt for Louis, the tortoise, so that we could give him a bath. Now you see, Louis is given free roam of the house and he likes to hide in small dark spaces, which means finding him is somewhat of a mission. We looked high and low, in every nook and cranny I could think of, all the while Thalia got more and more excited, shouting ‘Louis, Louis’ and she stomped around the house. Finally we found him, huddled behind a piece of furniture and took him for his bath, a job Thalia relishes…anything where she can get a bit messy! And after some ‘gently splash Louis…now all clean’ gobbledygook from Thalia, it was time for lunch. Carrots, pitta bread, humous, cottage cheese and tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes!

Finally, after much crying, giggling, running (and falling over) and shouting (her, not me), I got the naughty little one into bed for her afternoon nap (I know…I wish it was socially acceptable for a 21-year-old to have a nap too!), meaning I could use the time to do some of my mountains of uni work. Did I? No, of course not. I spent two hours pretending to work (i.e. having the word document open), while really I was just on facebook/twitter/STA or watching some crap on Ninjavideo (you know the drill).

Luckily, when Thalia awoke she was in a much better mood, and while there was still a little complaining about the ‘mappy’ change – ‘don’t like it, don’t like it! Just mummy do it’ – she was enthralled enough with the idea of doing some painting that she didnt put up too much of a fuss this time.

And painting we did. Her hands were covered. Her feet were covered. Her clothes were covered. The sink went purple. The flannel turned multicoloured. She had a blast! The fun continued outside on the trampoline, where I was ordered to sit and ‘watch’ as she bounced to her heart’s content, checking every now and again that I was indeed doing as I was told.

I’ll end the day with tales of bath time and bedtime which were, thankfully, an absolute pleasure. We got all the plastic ducks out, had a bubble blowing fight and took lots of photos (to which Thalia says ‘me see, picture, me see?’ At story time we read a book called ‘I Want My Mum’…her choice. Very funny little tale of a princess who wont go anywhere or do anything without her mum. Sounds like someone I know. Then it was night night, lights out. Zzzzzzz.

Babies are hard work. I love her to bits but I’m glad I could give her back at the end of the day!